


Petal By Petal

by AndreaLyn



Category: Tin Man (2007)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-05-28
Updated: 2011-05-28
Packaged: 2017-10-19 21:01:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,624
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/205159
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AndreaLyn/pseuds/AndreaLyn
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When you learn to be free, can it be done in tandem with someone else who's known a prison?</p>
            </blockquote>





	Petal By Petal

_There’s a myth, you know._

 _What does it say?_

 _It’s more than one to darkness she be drawn, but no one looks past the pretty verse. It tickles the ear and makes you happy to hear, but it’s not just that. It goes on to talk about the bravest of men who defend she who is brought to light. It goes on to talk about the man who absorbs the dark, who reflects back the light. Whose resolve is hard as tin._

 _Sounds like some myth._

 _Not all pleasing verses are false._

*

At first, he had avoided her on the principle that her hands ordered armies forth and her voice commanded his Resistance members killed and those lips drew the Mystic Man’s last breaths away from him. She avoided him as, by now, she understood white hot anger in someone’s eyes and it turned her stomach every time she realized it was directed at _her_. It was a perfectly tacit agreement to avoid the other and was almost pleasant. But it was also about to end.

Azkadellia stood before him, about to upset that precious balance and neither of them looked very pleased about it.

“Accompaniment,” he echoed, unflinching and unwavering in his stoic reaction.

“It’s insisted. And Ambrose is taking DG.” She folded her palms in her hands, once-perfect nails now ragged and torn. “I wouldn’t ask, but I need to be there and there are very few men in the O.Z. that I trust to be there with me.”

“And I’m one of them,” Cain announced that reality with great disbelief.

Azkadellia flushed an embarrassed pink and nodded. “DG speaks highly of you and so does Ambrose and Raw.” Cain would, in later weeks, discover that Azkadellia had an apprehension in asking Raw to take her because of all the horrors he might have glanced from a single touch. “You wouldn’t need to look at me,” she told him, almost painfully. “It’s simply necessary to have the accompaniment for propriety’s sake.”

He relented and agreed as he doubted he could have done anything else (at least, not if he didn’t want to hear about it on end from DG).

It was in descending the stairs for the event that Cain slowly began to see Azkadellia for herself rather than just a vessel for a Witch. Standing there in her loose white gown, she stretched one arm out, looked at it with something like wonder before doing the same with the other. She tilted her chin ceilingwards and exhaled a soft prayer of gratitude to the gods.

Cain knew those movements.

They were the movements of someone who didn’t take the space around them for granted. Those were the actions of someone who had been kept locked away. He extended an arm to her and waited patiently after she took it for one of them to relax and begin to thaw. The icy discomfort prevailed, though, for most of the night. It only worsened in its severity when Cain asked her one simple question.

“Did it feel like prison?”

Five words, but they managed to bring Azkadellia near tears. She took a deep breath to steady herself and nodded. “The Witch used to tell me lies, but I could hear the truths, too. She took control and I watched. Sometimes, she let me think I could have my body back, that I could be in control and she’d yank it away and shove me down. She said…she said a lot that about how it was _our_ turn to be trapped.” Once finished, she stared down at her folded palms in her lap. “I was thirteen. I didn’t do things for myself again until I turned twenty-eight. I feel too old and too young all at once, like I’ve lived for five-hundred annuals in a dark, evil prison.”

“And now you’re free.”

“Of all people,” Azkadellia murmured (and for the first time, they shared an honest look removed of all hate and fear), “you know it’s not that simple.”

Simple wasn’t the way their world worked, wasn’t how men could be trapped in Iron Suits and let to forget how they used to move in more than the scant number of inches before them. Simple didn’t let young girls have their lives suddenly corrupted by evil witches.

And there they stood, two free people standing before a crowd of anxious people on the brink of fear and edging towards hope.

*

The screaming awoke everyone within a two-hall radius and Cain, who had already been awake, was one of the first on the scene, but not _the_ first. That was Ambrose, who was pacing back and forth and jumped when he saw Cain. “I just sent someone to find a key or to get DG,” Ambrose urgently said, standing back when Cain gently moved him aside with a hand firmly on his shoulder and one on his hip. “She’s got it locked from the in…”

The sound of wood splintering ended Ambrose’s worrying.

“…side. Or we could do that.”

Ambrose and Cain shared a long glance and wordlessly, Cain assured Ambrose that he would take care of it. He rested a hand on Ambrose’s shoulder once more and wasted no time in pushing past the splinters of the door and crawling into the room. The screaming had dissipated, but even in the shadows he could see her trembling and withdrawing shaky breaths, the occasional whimper coming from her. Cain slid into the bed and grasped her by the upper arm to get her to look him in the eyes. “Azkadellia,” he snapped, trying to get her attention. “What is it, what happened?”

She looked, still, like a spooked doe and Cain found himself slipping into old habits, drawing her into his arms until the shaking subsided.

“I saw her,” she insisted. “In the corner, I _saw_ her, Cain. I saw her!” The panic was refusing to leave her voice. “It wasn’t a dream, I swear, she was here.” Her hands grasped fistfuls of his button-down, clutching him so tightly that he could feel her body pressed against him. The Witch still haunted them all, no matter how much they told themselves that it was all over. Azkadellia seemed as if she couldn’t escape her.

“It’s okay, I’m here,” he promised, pressing a soft kiss against her cheek and stroking a hand protectively on her hair, resting his chin atop her head. The gentleness seemed to ease her and she relaxed against him. He debated adding that he was armed, but his presence seemed to be enough against the imagined threat.

She wasn’t shaking anymore, but she still held onto him, glancing up between the narrow space between them. “Do you have to leave immediately?” she asked, her voice strained.

“I can stay,” he assured, doubting she’d actually let him go, but he didn’t feel as if he could live with himself if he left, feeling some kind of empathy for her. He had his own nightmares of Iron Suits and replayed loops and endless screams. She exhaled a sigh of relief and murmured ‘thank you’ against the corner of his lips and he had to wonder when they had gotten so close.

She lay close to him and neither of them thought to sleep and give the nightmares any power. After an hour of lying awkwardly in the dark, staring at a splintered door, the mood shifted out of necessity.

“How often do you see her?” Cain asked, palm splayed between the avian set to her shoulderblades.

“Every night. But usually, I’m asleep. I was awake tonight, I was wide awake,” she insisted. Cain hadn’t once believed she’d been making it up. Sometimes, even if it wasn’t real, it still _existed_ in some manner of the word. “You have nightmares, too,” she quietly deduced. “I recognize the terse feeling as you lie down, that inability to sleep.”

“Maybe I’m just looking after you,” he countered.

“I never see you sleep. Sometimes, I watch for it, as though the fact that you can sleep peacefully means then there’ll be hope for me,” she confessed, her words as tense as the way she held her body.

Cain ignored the fact that she was apparently watching him when he thought he was alone, trying to think up a beautiful little lie to tell her, to promise it would be all right.

But no lie ever came.

*

He wasn’t awake when he felt the second body make its presence known in his bed. For a moment, time refused to stay linear and Cain eased his arms open to encourage Adora back into the warmth of his body. Time snapped back to normality when Cain inhaled deeply and the smell was not that of Adora, but a familiar one, nonetheless. Cain’s arms were wrapped around Azkadellia and he eased a soft, reassuring kiss to her cheek to assure her that she was welcome.

She rearranged herself (with far less tenseness than the last few times they had spent in her bed) and laid her cheek to his chest, palm splayed on his stomach.

She liked to hear the heartbeat, she explained. It reminded her that she was still alive.

It was familiar, now, for her to crawl into bed with him and receive a reassuring kiss. They spent the first many nights awake, but soon even that gave way to light sleep. Sometimes he snored, so said Azkadellia, but she liked it and promised it was soothing.

One such night, when he bent his head to kiss her cheek, his lips found hers and he froze there momentarily, unsure of what he had done. It took more than a moment for Cain to realize that maybe, just maybe, she had tilted her head on purpose. Her lips felt soft and unsure beneath his and immediately, Cain tried his best to keep the awkward kiss gentle. He refused to pull away, though, kissing her with the trepidation of a first kiss, cupping her cheek as he eased closer. Whether the kiss was born in desire or simply some act to ward the shadows away, he assented, knowing his willingness to kiss her was not a new sensation and had been lurking in dark places for a long time now.

They parted and she rested her cheek upon his chest, as if they could blame away the action as an impetus of the night.

He held her a little tighter that night, but they both slept a little better for it.

*

Over breakfast (so early that there were very few people in attendance), Ambrose sat down across from Cain and effectively cornered him. “Azkadellia hasn’t been in her room the last few evenings,” he said mildly. “Some of the girls of the palace say they see her sneaking into your chambers in nothing but her nightgown and bare feet upon the floor.” Ambrose twisted up his lips and looked expectantly over the table. “I thought we were best friends, Wyatt. I thought you would have told me if anything happened.” Now his tone came out slightly bitter and wounded.

Something had happened, but Cain was hesitant to talk about it. Kisses in the darkness could be glossed over as dreams, but Cain’s constant (and far more impure) thoughts couldn’t just be tucked under a rug.

He chanced a look around them, pleading with Ambrose using his eyes for them to keep this quiet. “She sleeps with me to ward away bad dreams,” he gave the truth of it. “Except lately…it’s more than just lying there. Nothing more than chaste little kisses, but gods, Ambrose,” Cain exhaled raggedly. “I feel like she’s bound to do me in. I can’t stop thinking about it. It feels like it’ll burn me whole if I let it.” He hadn’t felt something of the like since before the Iron Suit – with Adora and the early days of their courtship. “And she’s the _Princess_ ,” he nearly hissed in his direction. “I’m not even a working man, but I think lowly citizen is a good way to put me.” Ambrose appeared to be deep in thought at Cain’s lengthy (for him) pronouncement. “Well, oh great, Advisor? What do I do?”

“Don’t hurt her,” was the only definitive answer that Ambrose dared to give. “Azkadellia. Really?”

“She understands being trapped,” Cain quietly said. The unspoken part of that happened to be, ‘and you forgot what being a prisoner of your own mind was like when you got back your brain’. “Look, Ambrose,” he said, the edge trying to be there in his words, but it came across muted. “I don’t know what to do. I don’t know if I should keep going with this, I don’t know what she wants. And what’s DG going to say?”

“It will probably go harmoniously with the slap she’s bound to give you,” Ambrose said thoughtfully.

Cain just sighed out with a sound that remarkably seemed like all his troubles were being exhaled. They sat in silence (as brought on by that sigh) and Ambrose never once took his eyes off of Cain.

“Should I stop the rumours?” was all he eventually asked.

“No,” Cain said, determined in that much, at least. “No. People should know that she’s protected. Even if I don’t know what I’m doing here, she’s safe. I won’t hurt her and I won’t _let_ anything hurt her or DG. Not ever again.”

With that much said, they ate the rest of their breakfast in peace.

At least, it was peaceful until Ambrose started in on the questions (“So what’s it like in bed with her? Do you _like_ her? What size are her…” “ _Ambrose_!”)

*

She’d been ripping at the back of her dress when he found her – she had been standing before one of the larger windows of the palace. Her hair was bound up and fell in curled tendrils, allowing a full view of her neck. She was probably supposed to look peaceful, but tearing and clawing at the blue dress, she was anything but. He immediately changed direction upon seeing her, wrapping an arm around her waist to guide her to the corner, where he took her hands into his. “What’s the matter?” he asked quietly.

“I just came from lunch with some of the reformed Longcoats and I had to wear this and…” she sounded nearly hysterical, her free hand still fighting at straps and hooks just out of her reach. “And I feel so trapped, I can’t _breathe_ , I can’t…I need to take it off, please.”

“Okay, come on,” Cain coaxed gently, wrapping his other arm around her and hugging her momentarily to encourage some kind of calmness. “I’ll take it off for you.”

“It’s a very difficult skill. It’s not just any old zipper.”

“I know how,” he assured her, releasing his grip on her to take her arm and accompany Azkadellia into her room, which was the closer of the two. “Adora used to wear a less severe version, but it was made using the same principles. I know how,” he promised her once more, closing the door behind him to ensure privacy.

Her breaths were shallow as could be and Cain hastened to her side, laying one hand to her shoulder. “Hey, it’ll be off soon, don’t worry,” he promised, prying his hat off to remove shadows that prevented him from seeing. He started from the top, not saying a word as each clasp was unwound in the precise way it required. His breaths seemed heavy and hers seemed delicate as he unwound a tight cage, which seemed almost torturous to inflict upon her.

Slowly, cloth gave way to pale skin and Cain came to realize that Azkadellia hadn’t worn a chemise beneath. He bowed his head and rested his forehead on the nape of her neck, closing his eyes to preserve her modesty, yet pry the corset off of her by touch alone. There was one clasp left and he exhaled a long breath, opening his eyes only to discover that the short hairs upon the base of her neck were standing on end. Cain brushed the pad of his thumb over her shoulderblades, letting it slide down the gentle curve of her spine, nudging out the last wound clasp with only that thumb and two fingertips. He could hear her exhale or maybe it was a moan, but it came out a soft ‘oh’ and Cain felt her lean further back into his arms.

The corset slid off and away, leaving Azkadellia free of clothing from the waist up. Cain refused to let himself look and eased to her right, prying the buttons loose from his shirt (leaving only his white t-shirt) and sliding the blue garment off, dressing her with it from behind, his arms sliding up hers to fix the sleeves.

She seemed to drown in his clothing, but her nimble fingers did up the buttons and tugged on the lapels as she turned to face him, smiling almost peacefully now. Almost angelically. It was worth more than his shirt to earn that smile.

“It smells like you,” she observed, with a narrowly playful smile on her lips.

“That mean I’m out of a nightly job?” he asked, only slightly kidding.

“No.” It didn’t need more explanation than that and Cain felt an inexplicable flood of relief at that.

She still tugged the lapels, staring up at him with some kind of sorcery or magic because he couldn’t begin to look away.

“Azkadellia,” he exhaled, barely realizing he was tucking his shirt into her skirts until he was done doing it, that instead of taking his hands back, he instead rested them on the curve of her hips.

“Thank you,” she said sincerely. “I feel like I can breathe again.” She wrapped one lazy palm around his neck and leaned in, exhaling a soft puff of air against the corner of his lips before she leaned in to kiss him. It was firm and it was sure, unlike so many other nighttime kisses and more than that, it was their first kiss by daylight.

That they even had more than one at _all_ was still something of a shock to Cain. He felt himself drawing into her touch, like happily giving in to a siren and he felt the whole of his body melt into hers with one kiss that turned from polite ‘thank you’ to deeper desire as they pressed up against each other. Azkadellia relinquished the lapels of his shirt for his cheeks and cupped them hard as she desperately coaxed his lips open and there came another little moan from past her lips. If Cain were a normal man without steady and thick principles, his resolve would have been long washed away by now.

It was Azkadellia that broke the kiss to stare up at him with dazed eyes and it was Cain that initiated the second daylight kiss, nearly swooping her back into his arms (with a light tug forward on her hips) and it made every other kiss seem like mere practice for the real thing.

His hands found their way to her waist and tugged at her to pull her to the bed, knowing that the next steps were the most important and precarious and they needed to tread lightly. Maybe it wasn’t love, but it felt warm and safe and cocooned Cain with the knowledge that he could take solace in Azkadellia knowing she had gone through similar tortures as him.

And she _wanted_ him by the way she pushed into the kiss, moaned his name, pressed her palms under his shirt and travelled up his chest, winding through the hairs there.

There was a line to be crossed and once they got past it, Cain had the feeling they wouldn’t be able to come back from it.

He only thought of that because he had the certain knowledge that he was leaving that very line in the distance as he moved his hand to slowly unbutton his shirt and cup her breast with his hand, calloused fingertips brushing against the soft skin and he wondered if anyone had ever done this with her before. She shivered and her back arched, pushing her chest into his hands and he clasped tighter yet, tilting his head for a slower kiss, languid and letting his intentions for her come clear in the touch of both his fingers and his lips.

She had yet to pull away.

Cain was beginning to think she wouldn’t ever, not at this rate.

“Azkadellia,” he exhaled, a lazy murmur right by her ear, lips softly brushing up her jaw to rest by her earlobe. “Do you _want_ this?” It had to be more than her just allowing things to happen. Cain refused to let her give in because she thought she ought to or she figured she could just somehow make it through. His eyes fell on the curve of her neck, the soft fall of ringlets there and he moved to kiss down her neck and back up, finding her lips once more.

She exhaled a ‘yes’ into the next kiss and Cain knew that the line was so far behind them now, it might as well be invisible.

It was hardly any work now to shed the remainder of their clothes and they took it in turns. For every undoing of a button that she did, he would push away another inch of her skirts. For every tentative kiss she gave to his lips, he would press a careful one to her neck and then lower to each breast, fingers cupping them and thumb rubbing over the nipple as she brushed her knee against his slowly-growing erection.

Ambrose had once commented that whole assemblies had been at the power of Azkadellia’s beauty, forced to cross their legs just to keep themselves in line.

The thought flitted through Cain’s head briefly as he hissed and inhaled a sharp breath of air when she replaced that knee with those long and tapered fingers of hers. He had to wonder how much of this she had known before and how much had been trickles of information that the Witch had let in, but those thoughts didn’t last very long when they were both naked and rumpling the luxurious sheets that lay on the bed.

He was panting, trying to keep himself suspended above her with a single hand, his other hand tracing intricate and lazy patterns against her shoulder – some symbol he had once seen in the Mystic Man’s travels.

“Cain,” she murmured, staring up at him. Her hair was a mess on the pillow and it seemed to flood down her sides in rivulets and there was a golden tint to each strand in the soft light of the room. If you looked close enough, too, you could see the desperate look in her eyes.

Cain’s eyes were fixated on the rise and fall of her chest, fingers drifting inwards from the shoulder to join his lips where he kissed the curve of her breast.

His whole body dipped and leaned, pressed in against her and they fit in a wholly imperfect manner.

She had said yes and Cain wanted this so much more than he could process in a sane and rational manner and his fingers coaxed her thighs to part slowly and he hovered, hesitated, waited for a moment just so he could watch her face as he slowly slid in and felt the slickness of her embrace him and encourage him even deeper.

There was no tightness and briefly, Cain felt a sharp and possessive flickering go through him as he wondered just whose bed the Witch had nudged Azkadellia into over the annuals and he vowed to enact his own form of revenge if he ever did find out _who_ it was.

As for now, though, his brain quickly shifted from that to the whole primordial reaction of, “ _Beautiful, hot, wet, yes, gods yes”_ and performed about four loops of the very same thing as he braced himself with one hand on the bed and one hand forming pink imprints on her bare and curvaceous hips.

She was looking up at him constantly, even when her head tipped back and her chin pointed to the ceiling. Somehow, she managed to still catch a glimpse of him and Cain might swear it was some kind of sorcery, but that care was thrown out the window as he pushed in deeper and she released a soft hitch of a breath accompanied by a moan of his name, loud and insistent.

“ _Cain_!”

He murmured her name low and constant by her ear as she pushed up against him and her hands clasped for parts of his body – arm, shoulder, hip, anywhere she could reach at least the once – and they pushed and thrust and their bodies met and slipped with the sweat they built up in the slow and patient exercise in intimacy they were involved in.

The corset was an object just out of sight and was nothing more than a memory of what had brought them there to begin with and they tumbled over the edge nearly together.

Azkadellia rolled atop him just as she climaxed, a relieved and quiet sigh escaping her lips as she did and settled atop Cain in a straddle, sinking down further as she widened her thighs and brought him to his own peak, crying out a sharp syllable that wasn’t very coherent to either of them.

She collapsed into a sprawl atop him in a graceful slide, prying herself up and off and curling up amidst his arms and the blankets, eyes closed and hair a curled mess that acted almost as if it were its own blanket.

“What happens now?” Azkadellia finally question, her voice thick with sleep.

“We talk about it in the morning.” Or maybe never, if Cain was really going to get very lucky about it. Either way, he drew her closer to protect her from any nightmares that might plague her in the middle of the night and ignored the fact that they had just pole-vaulted over a myriad of boundaries and lines they could never go back to, now.

*

Cain had been avoiding DG in the hopes that they wouldn’t have to talk about the rumours of the palace and Azkadellia’s improved mood or the fact that she seemed to be wearing his clothing and smelling of his soap more often than not, lately. That kind of blind faith in avoidance could only last so long and he wound up staggering right into DG, arms akimbo and giving him her fiercest and sharpest of all her glares.

Cain had _never_ been on the receiving end of _this_ glare, before. That was the murderous glare that people like Zero got for unleashing bullets on her friends. And somehow, somehow Cain had earned it.

“Hey kiddo,” Cain started, as if barreling forward would somehow erase her issues with him. “What’s new?”

“Are you dating my sister?” she demanded bluntly.

So the rumours had reached her, as well. And given the varied (and wholly untrue) stories he had heard, there was no wonder she was looking at him like she was planning to remove his liver via his fingertips. Without using magic. The rumours involved things like Cain debauching the Princess against her will to her using him as nothing more than a bed warmer to the rather colourful one where every night, Azkadellia and Cain snuck out to indulge in DeMilo’s brand of sin at his wagon – that one was perpetuated by the man himself, looking to drum up sales.

“Well?” DG demanded again, the single word shaking with the fury of her onslaught of questions. “Are you? I can _smell_ your cologne on her and she wanders around in your shirts. Cain, what the hell? I mean, I’m still getting used to this place and I turn around and suddenly you and my sister are knocking boots?”

“Look, DG,” Cain exhaled, the words rough and unpracticed. “I was just trying to help her. First she needed the escort, then Ambrose and I found her screaming, it just sort of…”

Tumbled. It _tumbled_ without control from there.

He shrugged because he didn’t have any words that would somehow justify this to her sister. Worse, Cain found himself wondering what would happen if the Queen or Ahamo came to him with these same kinds of questions. The very thought of staring down a man his contemporary and having to explain how he had been touching his daughter was enough to make him uneasy, as he knew exactly how he would feel in his shoes.

“I won’t hurt her, but I don’t even know what she wants,” Cain admitted, finally.

“She needs to feel safe,” DG said simply, looking up at him with wide eyes. “You should get that. More than anyone, you should. So make her feel safe and know that if you somehow screw things up, I’ll turn you into a frog. I’ve been practicing.”

“On _who_?” Cain couldn’t help asking.

“Longcoats,” DG helpfully supplied, just a smidgen too much of an eager note in her voice that was beginning to give Cain concern. “I switch them back generally. Although I did once make another Longcoat kiss the Longcoat frog as I did it, but I was having a bad day at the time.”

“Occasionally, kiddo, you worry me,” Cain expressed with a wary look at her. But she wouldn’t have said it unless she wanted Cain to know how absolutely serious she could be with her little threat.

They parted by Azkadellia’s door (now repaired due to the hard-working staff eager to make an impression) and Cain lingered there before knocking, thinking that he ought to stop by and just see how she was doing.

Maybe see if she knew that they were, apparently, dating.

She opened the door and Cain smiled awkwardly at her, feeling slightly speechless and like he ought to have just kept on walking for both their sakes. His eyes slowly descended to look her over and as usual, she was beautiful as the day before and the day before that. Cain doubted that Azkadellia had ever had a day when she wasn’t the most beautiful woman in the O.Z. And he was standing there about to ask if he could take her to dinner. Him, of all people.

Somewhere, he imagined Ambrose was laughing at him.

“Azka…”

“Wy…”

They began to speak at once and their names collided before they could even finish and they both descended into an awkward patter of laughter together. Cain watched that smile on her face and stood there, amazed that he could still recall a time when he looked at her and saw anything but the young woman who was learning to be free again. The beauty that was learning to touch and taste and smell, to see and hear for herself.

“I was hoping you’d keep me company at dinner,” Cain finally took the initiative to speak, holding out a hand to her and watching as her smaller hand clasped about his fingers with a sureness that she had been missing for so long. “Maybe if we’re both there, we can make the gossip at least spread out between the both of us.”

“Maybe,” she agreed with a lilting and playful note in her voice and she stepped out of the room in a graceful step and twined her fingers with his.

They walked down the halls in a slow and lazy patter and their hands never parted the once.

“So, tell me about your day.”

Maybe, Cain surmised, maybe the question of whether they were together or a couple or anything more than two people trying to find their way in the world while learning how to break free of their former bonds, maybe that question could wait until after a very nice dinner. It could wait until after their date, wherein the question would be rendered impossible to answer unless a ‘yes, absolutely’ was given.

Maybe that was the way Cain wanted it to be and the way he hoped Azkadellia would want, as well.

*

 _Do you still doubt the verse?_

 _Our lives aren’t written on prophetic pages, Princess._

 _Maybe. Maybe not. But I like to think someone is looking out for me._

 _I didn’t know I needed help with that job._

 _You don’t. But sometimes, I feel like I need help looking out for you. It helps._

 _So, is there more to it?_

 _There’s more. We’ll save it for tomorrow night and the days after that._

THE END

  
_somewhere i have never travelled,gladly beyond  
any experience,your eyes have their silence:  
in your most frail gesture are things which enclose me,  
or which i cannot touch because they are too near_   


  
_your slightest look easily will unclose me  
though i have closed myself as fingers,  
you open always petal by petal myself as Spring opens  
(touching skilfully,mysteriously)her first rose_   


  
_or if your wish be to close me,i and  
my life will shut very beautifully,suddenly,  
as when the heart of this flower imagines  
the snow carefully everywhere descending;_   


  
_nothing which we are to perceive in this world equals  
the power of your intense fragility: whose texture  
compels me with the colour of its countries,  
rendering death and forever with each breathing_   


  
_(i do not know what it is about you that closes  
and opens;only something in me understands  
the voice of your eyes is deeper than all roses)  
nobody,not even the rain, has such small hands_   


  
_e.e.cummings_   



End file.
